The right hotel can be the home-away-from-home experience you always hope for in a vacation or it can be  the nightmare you must return to after an exhausting day of seeing sights. For us, the hotel isn’t often that important when we plan to be out doing things most of the day. But with five days of high intensity activities, I felt that finding a good hotel for this trip would be pretty important....

For our last summer fling, which coincidentally nears my oldest’s 5th birthday, I thought what better place to go than Disneyland, the “happiest place on earth”!  As our vacation approached I busily learned all I could to make this a successful trip. I planned to apply some of the well-known traveller tricks: 1) plan for half-days in the park and half-days relaxing, 2) try to eat meals...

Continuing on our Heritage Days tour (see previous post), on Sunday we went toward Auburn to do some mining. The first stop was the Gold Country Museum.  At the entrance is a dimly lit shaft, resembling a mine. Following it through you come to a room with some great mining relics, including a working stamping machine. Here is where large rocks were brought and crushed under heavy cylinders. Though the...

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to create experiences in history and culture. How do you instill in kids a sense of connectedness to our past and the world around us? Starting locally, any lesson in our history here in California must include Native American culture and The Goldrush. I have googled Native American dancing periodically, hoping to find a public event that will really capture the kids’...

As we are gearing up for our last summer trip, an upcoming birthday party, and the beginning of school, no day trips (or “special days” as they are called around here) have been in the works lately. Amy and the Q Family, who have been doing backyard camping, have inspired me to talk more about our local adventures.   I am lucky to live in a town that that is both small enough to be missed on most travel...